


Wolf Blood

by saturninesunshine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Public Nudity, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturninesunshine/pseuds/saturninesunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She meets him again the only way she could ever meet him again. Stupidly. That stupid bull with his stupid lightning chest. She recognizes him immediately. He doesn’t recognize her at all.</p><p>Post Storm of Swords, Gendry and Arya meet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first GoT or ASoIaF fic, not to mention GendryxArya. I'm new to this so I don't think I have the colloquialism down, but this is a first attempt. I am rally trying to get this in character, but it's probably more canon with the show than the books. Again, it's my first so try not to be too harsh. Disclaimer: I have no yet read past s Storm of Swords.

She meets him again the only way she could ever meet him again. Stupidly. That stupid bull with his stupid lightning chest.

She recognizes him immediately.

He doesn’t recognize her at all.

Not even a fortnight landing back on Westeros’ shores and while trying to sneak like a shadow through the forest, she runs into them. The Brothers Without Banners. The moment she recognizes the sigil, she banishes any thought of the bastard boy from her mind.

He doesn’t belong there anymore. And yet somehow, he is the first one she comes upon.

Her years across the sea taught her to be Faceless and when she focuses, it’s on what will make a man bleed out the fastest. But the lightning sigil on her opponent’s chest distracts her. 

He’s still a bull and when their swords clash, she knows all he sees is a stranger. 

She brings the hilt of her sword to his temple and knocks him to the ground while the Brothers watch. She hadn’t meant to find him. All she wanted to do was pass like a shadow.

Swift as a deer.

Quiet as a shadow.

Calm as still water. 

He hits the ground hard. He is an outlaw after all.

She doesn’t know how she likes that. She wants him to be a blacksmith. He could have been her dead wolf-brother’s smithy at the royal forge and they could have rode together. But she never wanted to be a princess anyway. She just wanted to be Faceless. 

Now all she tastes is blood.

She’ll never call him Ser Gendry. Not after leaving her. And she’s better than any knight stupid outlaw anyway. She’s a better rider and a better swordsman. She’s had to be. 

Still, she thinks maybe she’ll keep him. 

He was never a wolf so he couldn’t be in her pack. But she’s a lone wolf now so that doesn’t really matter.

The bruise on the side of his head is ugly.

He deserved it anyway.

She wonders how long it is until he sees her. She doesn’t care what a stupid flowery knight thinks, but when he nurses his wound, he looks into her eyes.

He isn’t stupid. He is, but she would admit that he isn’t as stupid as everyone else. He’s just Gendry Waters, the bastard boy.

Too bloody lowborn for m’lady high.

Somehow that’s the thing she remembers. Not being pulled onto the Hound’s horse. Not the Twins running with blood.

She knows now that was Gendry’s voice calling after her and no one else’s.

She doesn’t know why.

All she knows is that he’s looking. She doesn’t know what he’s looking at but she knows that she doesn’t like it.

She feels the strange familiarity of frustration at him and for a moment, she’s almost Arry again. For a moment, it’s almost safe to smile. But only for a moment. She looks away and goes back to being no one.

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t look at her when he says it.

“You said that before.”

None of them want to think of the last time they saw each other. Arya survived by banishing thoughts from her mind that would break her heart. So she made her heart stone.

“M’lady.” It’s resigned, none of the former jest he used to have. The war has ruined them all.

“Don’t call me that.”

Never the proper lady before, she’s even worse now. She’s no lady. She’s lost her jest too. She’s lost herself. Ladies don’t dream of blood. Ladies have families and not death lists.

He just looks at her. He hasn’t changed at all. She knows he stares because she’s changed. She’s uglier now. War has made her even more gruesome. She hadn’t been looking to attract a lord husband before and she isn’t worried about that now. She thinks he’s more muscled and something about that could threaten to make her face hot. But she pushes that thought away. 

They move out at dawn. She hates the slow convoy. She would be quicker by herself, if not safer. She thought the same thing while escaping Harrenhal but she had a pack then. She has no pack now. Her plan was to slip out into the darkness like a ghost.

“You still run like a boy.”

“You’re still stubborn and stupid.” 

He always gets in the way.

She shuffles back to her sleeping place after he catches her in the dark. She couldn’t ask why he looks or what he even thinks he’s looking at. They are strangers now. But he looks anyway and somehow her face gets hot. She’s sure all the tavern girls crawl into bed with him.

He insists on speaking to her. But she says nothing. She gives away nothing. Not about where she’s been or where she’s going. He’s good at shutting up too, after a point. She remembers that when he walks next to her silently.

He doesn’t walk as close to her as he used to. She doesn’t know why that bothers her. And she can’t understand why that is at all. She catches him in a stare too often. She supposes she still really is horse-faced.

When the men run out of songs they start to tell stories. At the end of this war, their favorites to tell are the ones about the previous one. Arya used to love the stories of the Targaryens and the warrior sisters Visenya and Rhaenys. If she had a sword like Dark Sister she’s sure she could escape. 

But she knows she’s not a prisoner now, even though she doesn’t trust them. She doesn’t trust anyone. She doesn’t know why she stays.

She’s heard these tales so many times from her father but now she likes it less. She never met her aunt, but everyone stares at her when they speak of her. Gendry stares particularly.

The dragon prince sang a song so sad that maid the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying, she poured wine over his head.

“She was beautiful.” Arya remembers her father’s words. 

Beautiful, willful, and dead before her time.

It’s the first time she speaks and the Brothers all look at her. She must still look as though she’s a child and not a woman of six and ten.

“Aye.” She doesn’t hear who agrees but afterwards Gendry stalks into the woods alone. 

Arya doesn’t know what the feeling is blooming in her chest, but it makes her confused. Eyes are on her and she wishes to disappear like she used to be able to in Braavos.

Sometimes she walks alone and sees one of the Brothers smack Gendry in the back of the head. Gendry looks back at her and then quickly away. She doesn’t know what this means either. That’s why she finally follows him into the woods. 

He’s hitting a tree with a stick. She knows he’s supposed to be a knight but she can’t help but think that they were just children when they were ripped apart from the world that they knew. And without it, she never would have met him.

She doesn’t know how that makes her feel.

“Go away.”

She frowns. Everything about him is achingly familiar. 

“Go away, m’lady.”

She hates that.

She hates him.

He still doesn’t look at her. But his head is bowed and she feels the fury build within her. Not the anger at everything that was taken from her but the frustration and irritation at a stupid bull-headed boy.

“No.”

He finally looks at her. “We shouldn’t be alone together.”

“Why?”

He struggles for words. He always seems this way around her. Strange because she’s sure she always sees him talking comfortably to the other Brothers.

“We just… shouldn’t.”

He avoids her eyes again. 

She was practiced at being swift and quiet after the Twins. She had hardened her heart because affection was a death sentence and love was for children. But looking at him she feels wild again. Not the cold calculation she feels in battle. Instead she feels the familiar wolf blood surge within her and she can’t hold herself back.

She throws a rock at him. 

It hits him. Not particularly because she has spectacular aim – her hands shake from her anger – but because he doesn’t look at her in time to avoid it.

“I’m sorry, m’lady.”

“Stop saying that.” 

When he does finally look at her, she can’t think of why she’s breathing so hard.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I am,” she says softly, only because her voice is so hoarse. Her chest hurts and she ignores the heat in her. She should be a stone. Instead she feels like a tittering little girl. The one that used to dream of riding as an outlaw with him.

“You can’t see me,” she says. “I’m no one.”

“No,” he says, finally taking a step forward. “You’re Arya.”

She dances backwards. Instinctively, her hand is on the hilt of her sword. He eyes her strangely. She sees the questions that have building displayed on his face but she just wants to hit him until it all goes away.

He still doesn’t back away. He isn’t afraid like everyone else, and somehow, that makes her angrier.

“Where were you?”

“Why?” Arya snaps. “You don’t care.”

“That’s not—“

“You left me.” She hadn’t realized what had been building in her as well. “You were my friend and you just left me. You were all I had. I’m no one and you’re just a stupid bastard boy.”

But he is a man now. She sees that. She sees it in his arms and his face in a way that she hadn’t seen before. She sees how he doesn’t flinch and he still doesn’t reach for the sword hanging on his belt.

“You left me—“ She doesn’t realize her sword is out of its sheath until she’s in her water dancer’s position. An instinct like everything else.

“I missed you.” It isn’t what she wants from him. He isn’t like the men she’s met, the ones that are hardened and amused by little girls with swords.

“Don’t.”

“I would have ridden after you,” he said. “I would have if I didn’t think I would find you raped to death.”

The war has hardened them all. She doesn’t expect that from his mouth and she doesn’t want to hear it. The Twins is the last thing that she wants to think on. She just brandishes her sword, her teeth clenched. “I said don’t.”

His eyes are hard too. This makes her angry. Angry at everything that was taken from her, including him. She lunges. He does move this time, backing into a tree, her sword pressing into his chest.

“Are you going to fight me or not?” she demands, breathing harshly.

A woman grown but she’s still that wild thing she once was. She wants to keep her face but every second longer he looks on her, she loses herself a bit more. 

He only shakes his head before hefting his sword.

“As m’lady commands.”

His skill has improved, but they are still unevenly matched. His swings are strong and she is light as a feather. But she still never lands a blow. His sword is too heavy, dangerously cutting and slicing against hers. He’s aged and he’s turned into what she knew he always was. He’s dangerous. 

He was always good with a hammer. Even so, she knows that he’s only humoring her. But she rains steel down on him again and again until he’s on his knees.

Only when she’s beating his chest on the ground does she realize that she has thrown her sword away. He still stares up at her, letting her assault him. His sword lies useless on the ground next to hers. 

There’s a sound of crashing through the trees and Gendry rolls over quickly at the sound of his brothers approaching quickly. She feels a peculiar burn of anger at his quick distance from her. Like he’s brushed her away as though she’s some sort of wench with unwanted hands on him. She supposes he’s used to that. She’s sure how girls look at him.

She lies on the ground as useless as their swords as he distances himself from her, still unable to meet her gaze.

“The war will be over soon, m’lady,” he says, determinedly. “We’ll escort you home. And you’ll get to marry a lord and give him sons.”

She doesn’t know what that has to do anything. 

“No.” She springs to her feet, afire by her anger. Looking at him, she is just a child again. “I don’t want to and I never will. My sister will marry a lord. She’s pretty and sings songs.”

When his eyes meet hers she’s shocked at how strikingly blue they are. She never noticed before and this time he doesn’t look away.

“You’re pretty.” He’s stilted like he’s never said the word before. Probably hasn’t. Probably just reciting what’s in the songs to make fun of her. No one’s ever said that to her before and she don’t expect they ever well. She never cared about those things anyway.

She punches him hard in the chest. He topples backwards, pliant again for her, but keeps to his feet. Gendry never looked at her that way before pledging himself to the Brotherhood. She supposes being a knight made him false and gallant like all the other knights that Sansa preened after. 

She doesn’t have time to think on this when they’re interrupted, the Brotherhood finally finding them.

“What’s going on here?”

Gendry’s head is bowed, almost in shame. Arya still can’t understand what’s so wrong about wrestling. Gendry takes a few more paces away from her so there is good distance between them.

“Nothing,” Gendry mumbles before being pulled away.

“What did we talk about, boy?” They speak when they think she’s out of earshot.

Arya wants to know but Gendry just shuffles off. “I know.”

Arya really wants to know. But no one wants to tell her. Gendry doesn’t speak to her again and goes to sleep on the other side of the camp.

Arya considers running again. Gendry won’t catch her this time. Staying with the Brothers was strategic. She knows that. They were outlaws against the crown and when she dreams, her muzzle is dipped in the Queen’s blood.

But all she wants to do is run. She can never be ransomed, but they make her feel like a prisoner again. She feels kept like she would with a lord husband. They still exchange looks like she’s still too young to understand. 

She thought she knew Gendry, but this place is foreign and distant. She only lives for blood now and this world is strange to her.

She thinks they sit her down to tell more stories but instead she feels like she’s in trouble with her septa. Wolves don’t have to suffer courtesies and behave like girls. She hasn’t been a girl for a long time and she isn’t about to stop that.

“Watch yourself with that bastard.”

Arya frowns.

She doesn’t like how they talk about Gendry that way. She thought they were brothers, but whenever they talk about him to her, he’s just a bastard blacksmith. She never had to be careful with him before. He was her friend. 

“He’s just Gendry.” No one could ever hurt her. No matter how many new names she took on, she was a Stark of Winterfell. One of the last Starks. And no one could kill her until she had finished.

Gendry wouldn’t even try. He was different.

“He’s borne out of lust and sin. And things are different now.”

Arya knows the things that are said about bastards. She heard them all her life even though Jon was nothing but gentle and loving to her, even though he was a Snow.

“What do you know about it?” she asks defiantly. 

“You’re a woman grown and wartime will soon be over. Wouldn’t fancy a new one.”

“What could do that?” She’s confused.

“We can’t very well let you go off and ruin yourself, now can we, Lady Arya?”

This makes her seethe. All she can be to them is a gentle little lady. She spent years learning how to kill men. Being ruined was nothing she had cared about before or even thought on. After they took her father’s head, everything seemed to fade away. None of that mattered.

But Gendry seemed so concerned with her marriage prospects – strangely more than her lady mother ever had. She never had any intention with lying with any man. And it baffled her that anyone would think Gendry could intentionally hurt her.

“Think on your aunt, m’lady. Lady Lyanna.”

Arya really likes these stories less.

“Only a year older than you when she was stolen away from her betrothed. So beautiful Prince Rhaegar crowned her the Queen of Love and Beauty right before his rightful princess. He kidnapped her not a year later.”

Arya looks away, her eyes searching blindly in the darkness. She can’t see him, but she knows Gendry sleeps among them.

“You aren’t a child no more, Lady Arya,” she’s told. “Hasn’t anyone told you how you look like her?”

Gendry doesn’t look at her anymore. He had been her friend. She thought he had been a part of her. They would have ridden of the edge of the world together because her family was dead and he didn’t belong to one of his own.

She walks through the camp, fumbling in the darkness. No men eye her like they would her sister. But Sansa liked skirts and dolls. All Arya wears are breeches and a sword at her hip. Her aunt didn’t do that. Maybe if her father had allowed it, like Arya’s own father had told her. But Arya’s lord father was dead and she had done what she had to in order to survive. And she would do a lot more before the fighting was done.

But she still walks and she finds herself in the darkness right in Gendry’s sleeping place. After Yoren had been killed they crept in secrecy and along with Hot Pie, would sleep next to each other every night without complaint. She was sure that she was just a boy in their eyes.

Arya never thought that anything would change. But she never thought she would see Gendry again either. Her thoughts had been on him since he pledged to the Brotherhood, but womanhood seemed to have come across her without her realizing it. Gendry had seen it from the moment he laid eyes on her.

She finds him deep in slumber and it doesn’t feel strange. She kneels by his side.

~

Gendry doesn’t recognize her at first. Her face is stone, just like her heart. He’s sure of this as the hilt of her sword connects with the side of his head. He wakes, seeing her looking at him from across the fire, blood in his eyes and a welt swelling purple on the side of his face.

Of course this is how he would see her again. Of course this is how he would see her when he had never thought he would see her again. His dead wolf-girl who haunted his dreams.

She’s old and she’s young but she’s still fierce. Even though her features have matured, that he can still see. She’s still a wolf maiden – even more of one. But he won’t even let himself think her as his. Even when his eyes trace the striking features that hadn't been apparent before. Even though her hair is now long, reaching her shoulders and growing wild. She could never be tame like proper ladies. She’s too beautiful. He's right to be separated from her. Too beautiful, too noble, like he knows she always was. She’s the only one that refuses to see it. Always a lady, even when covered in dirt.

He goes back to beating his sword on the anvil. All he’s good for and he’s heard her say something to that effect. He’s sure he hears her call him a stupid bull. 

When he sees her, he regrets this almost immediately. Almost, because when he walks through the brush into a clearing he can’t quite determine what’s happening. Only when his lumbering footsteps alert her and she starts does he realize she was bathing. She wrings out her wet clothes, a sharpened blade in her hand.

He turns a second too late. A second too late makes him positive no one could ever mistake her for a boy now. 

Maybe it wasn’t a second. Maybe he lingered longer than that.

He ducks behind a tree, his heart thudding against his chest as all the blood in his body rushes south. He grimaces, feeling sick. It isn’t what he would call pleasant like with the girls from the tavern. All he feels is sick and guilt, all the feelings meant for a bastard. 

She’s burned into his brain, her trusted knife in hand, exactly for moments such as these. Craven degenerates leering at unsuspecting maidens. He’s one of them. A bastard was said to be born of lust and sin and would only continue on as such.

He’s still out of breath when Ned Dayne breaks through the trees.

“Where are you going?” Gendry’s voice is hoarse and breathless in his ears. 

“What does it look like?” Ned stares at him peculiarly. 

Reaching manhood has made the child even more irksome to Gendry. He is a lord, yes. A highborn lord who would marry a wildly spirited lady while Gendry keeps banging on breastplates. 

“Don’t go over there.” Gendry is surprised at his voice. It almost sounds like a threat. He knows Ned feels the same when the lord stiffens.

“Why not?”

Gendry can’t think of logic. He was never good at that anyway. All he can feel is rage and all he can see is her trembling in her vulnerability in his mind.

But Arya could never be vulnerable. He pretends to be her and takes some of her strength.

“Take another step and it’ll be your last.”

Gendry doesn’t keep his promise. Not really. He has peaked the little lord’s interest. The entitled child steps close because Gendry is quiet. Gendry never shows rage or conviction. Gendry is the silent and powerful bull that swings a hammer. 

Gendry’s fists are still pounding into Ned when she comes through the trees, hair sopping and tangled around her vibrant face, but clothed in a leather tunic and breeches. She’s armed.

She stops short. There is no confusion there. Only cold stoniness. No fire. Only the Facelessness she learned across the Narrow Sea. She needs only take one look at Ned Dayne. She looks back at Gendry, grey eyes narrowed. He tries not to look at them too hard. He always tries hard not to get caught in her surprisingly fierce and harsh beauty now.

“I don’t need protection.”

“No,” Gendry speaks. “You never need anyone.” 

He can’t read her expression.

Her voice is filled with quiet danger. “I never asked you to protect me.”

“As m’lady commands.”

He doesn’t wait for her response. He leaves her standing there.

He goes to sleep early that night while the others stay up. He doesn’t want to know what the Brothers are telling her this night. Gendry is tired of the tales of Arya’s highborn family and how untouchable she is. He doesn’t need to be told. He knows.

He closes his eyes. The image of her at the edge of the water mocks him beneath his eyelids, refusing to let him go. All he can see is her nakedness and he tosses in his own sweat.

When she rouses him in the darkness, he’s sure it’s just another one of his dreams. Dreams he tries to banish when he sees the morning light. He knows better. He should know better.

Lady Arya would never come for him in the dark. In the dark was where all his sin rises. Dreams of her slight body being stolen away warped into something grotesque and regrettable. He had a violence and lust in him that only came out in the darkness.

He gropes for his sword, not exactly sure what he’ll do with it but she stops him. She’s close against him, her hand closing over his. He thinks maybe he was groping for something worse. Her little breath is against his neck and suddenly he’s afraid. He never feels fear in the throng of a battle. But all he feels is fear with little Lady Arya on top of him.

He looks to see her amongst the sleeping men.

He’s never been straddled by a woman like her. There’s never been a woman like her in all the gods, in all the seven kingdoms, in all the realms. He knows this.

Her eyes are as wild as her dark hair, half-crazed. He’s frozen. This is the wolf girl he used to know. Gone is the stony hearted assassin. This is his Arya. But still, she is a girl no longer. That’s what scares him. Gendry is rarely frightened. The last time he was frightened he saw the Hound’s horse racing away in the rain as he screamed his throat out calling her name. 

All he can think is that she’s on top of him in the dark. He can’t remember it being any darker. He can’t remember when everything became so frightfully different.

“Why are we acting like this is nothing?”

He can’t answer. He knows that there are a thousand thousand reasons why their position now is wrong. Why he should never look at her the way he does. Why he stares too long and too hard and thinks things of her that only sinful bastards are capable of. But he can’t speak when her grip is so tight on him. He can’t even think. She always held him tight.

He supposes when he swore himself to the brotherhood and saw her face fall. He sees it in his dreams at night. He had failed her. He supposes this is his consequence.

He wishes it felt very sacrificial. 

She is quiet, but quick. She always had been. He remembers wrestling her in a forge lifetimes ago. They sang songs of forest loves and acorns patterned her dress. The only dress he had ever seen her in and the first time he knew he would be going to the deepest of the seven hells. 

But this is different. This doesn’t feel the same. He knows it should feel wrong. He’s a Waters and she’s a Stark.

But he’s never known something so wrong to feel so undeniably good.

He’s definitely going to the seventh hell.

She’s still too quick. She was always faster, always more skilled, more knowledgeable. She’s Lady Arya of House Stark and he can’t stop her hands. He doesn’t want to. That’s the seed that’s been growing within him since she rode up; the Brothers attacking what they thought had just been an unprotected maiden. 

That’s when she hit him in the face. He should have known. They should have known. She had practiced hands around a sword and the hardened features of a girl who had seen her father and her brother’s head roll of their shoulders.

He should have seen her immediately.

She is highborn and to be kept pure for some perfumed lord. Even if she was never very pure, she is still more than he could ever be. All he wanted was to keep her safe. She is so small and he isn’t protecting her. He’s as bad as a raper. She isn’t meant for him. But he wants to take it all the same.

But he doesn’t. He lies on his back, attempting to twist away from inescapable hands.

“I’ve already seen your cock, remember?”

Her breath is hot on his face and he’s reminded of earlier that day again. Memories of her body at the water’s edge send his blood rushing again. 

She’s still small but her voice is different. Changed. Matured. 

She’s right.

Though not like it sounds, there was a time when he didn’t know she was highborn. He treated her like the rest of the boys. No one gave a second thought to pissing in front of each other on the way to The Wall.

But then she was m’lady.

She shouldn’t have seen him like every one else.

She feels him resisting. This is never how it happens in his dreams. But she has indeed seen him and he knows this the most he can when her hand surrounds him.

His breath is knocked from his body and for the life of him he will never remember how he thought he could resist her. She is Arya and he always follows her lead. This slight girl with a mind sharper than her sword.

She could never be his, but somehow, he is hers. He had always belonged to her and he would do whatever it was that she asked. He could surrender himself to her because his breath is short and he never wanted to resist to begin with. He wants to be noble but there was never resisting Arya Stark. He isn’t noble anyway. He’s just a bloody bastard.

He can hardly see straight with her hands on him. He wonders how many men she’s touched this way, but he finds that it doesn’t matter.

“Arya.” His voice is strained and in that moment, the both of them know it’s too late. They both know that she already has him. Her lips are hard and unpracticed against his, but he feels his blood lit afire. Her hand is still around him and he knows is that she can’t stop touching him.

“Shut up.”

All he can think is as m’lady commands. He doesn’t stop her. He can’t. He doesn’t push her away. She doesn’t want him to so he doesn’t want to.

He could never think to be this way. He was supposed to spend the rest of his days on The Wall, dressed in black, no wife, no lands, no children. 

But he would steal her away. He would start a war for her. Something that everyone seems to be afraid of for some reason. He would follow her to the ends of the earth. His head will go on a spike for this. He would have denied her as long as he could but it's a lost cause. And he doesn’t want to anymore.

Gendry breaks her maidenhead in a dark camp full of unwashed outlaws. He is silent the entire time. But he sweats and pants on top of her. The bull was always quiet. It is her gasps that are erratic and loud in his ears. He shouldn’t want it so much. He shouldn’t be so satisfied.

She doesn’t concentrate on anything but the way she feels safe when he holds her. She can’t think of anything else, but she pushes that thought away anyway as his body moves easily against hers, the both of them slick with sweat and want. 

She still thinks, of course it happened this way.

Outside, under the stars, in a camp of law breakers and renegades, she laid with him. When she finally feels his breath even out into sleep, she peels herself away before anyone can spot them. She does what she should have done to begin with.

She runs.

She runs with the wolf blood pumping inside her. She runs like her wolf-aunt must have, with the stag at her heels.

But he isn’t a stag. He’s a bull. She prefers it that way. She runs until the sun starts to come up over the horizon, until she hears him lumbering after her.

Of course he followed her. He follows her like he couldn’t follow her before.

“What are you doing?” He’s out of breath. She’s was always quicker, but he’s kept up.

She doesn’t understand at first. 

He’s abandoned his so-called brothers that he abandoned her for. He isn’t going to drag her back. He can’t do that now. She won’t allow it. 

She’s a woman grown and she won’t let Gendry Waters take her like so many others had against her will. To be used. To be hurt.

She doesn’t know why he’s followed. 

She feels the fury in her. She doesn’t know who he thinks he is. Not her husband. Not her father. 

But she never obeyed her father, when the breath was still in his lungs. She knows for a fact she will never have a husband and even if she did, she wouldn’t obey him either.

That’s what husbands do. They would command, keep her prisoner, and she would never obey. She would never be a lady. She was a wolf.

But Gendry never commanded. Sometimes he’s so stupidly quiet sometimes but then he would look at her with that smile. Sometimes he laughs at things only she says. That smile makes her confused like the girl of one and ten that she used to be. Gendry didn’t command. She was the one who commanded him. She remembers.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re running again.”

“Maybe you’re not so stupid after all.”

He’s confusing. He doesn’t act like other men. She wonders if that has to do with the fact that he knew her before her face went away. Or maybe it’s because he knows her still, even though she’s sure her face is gone. But he seems to look into her eyes fine. 

He follows her. He knows her when she was sure all of her melted away and disappeared. 

“Why are you pretending that this is nothing?”

“Why did you? You would have just left me.”

“Not this time, m’lady.”

The words stick in the back of her throat. Her clothes and hair are still disheveled and she knows that she smells like him. For the first time she hadn’t felt empty. And all because this stupid bastard boy was following her.

Stories run wild of the wolf maiden and her bull at her side.


End file.
